Victors' justice: Justice Department appointees favored power over law in redistricting

VICTORS' JUSTICE

Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Saturday, December 10, 2005

Texas' acrimonious redistricting plan — which in 2003 redrew congressional voting districts after prompting Democratic lawmakers to flee Texas in hopes of thwarting it — sowed discord in Washington as well. The latest revelations on the episode depict a Justice Department where the thirst for partisan dominance seems to have overpowered the practice of law.

Last week, the Washington Post reported on a leaked Justice Department memo that showed the agency's team of lawyers unanimously deemed the Texas plan illegal. The department's political appointees simply ignored this expertise and approved the map.

Under a special section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Texas and other states with a history of electoral discrimination must gain Justice Department "preclearance" on any new voting laws to ensure the power of minority voters is not diluted.

In 2003, the Justice Department team of six lawyers and two analysts unanimously agreed the Texas redistricting failed this test. Yet the political appointees who control the department overrode the team's analysis to give the map approval. State Republicans, also aware the new map had been deemed illegal by department attorneys, used the preclearance to put the plan into effect.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — who was not in office at the time — has defended the department's action, dismissing the episode as "disagreement within the ranks." This might be plausible if the ranks were not so evenly divided. On one side were political appointees. On the other, career civil servants who have quietly honed their expertise in election law for decades, working successfully for Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Successfully, that is, until quite recently. Historically, it is extremely rare for Justice officials to ignore unanimous, vigorous conclusions from their legal experts. But last month, department officials overrode the majority opinion of another team of its lawyers to support a Georgia voter identification law. The law was then deemed unconstitutional in court.

In the past seven months, according to one former Justice Department attorney, half of the lawyers in the department's voting section have departed, an unprecedented exodus for that part of the government. According to some attorneys who have worked in the office, the atmosphere has become politicized to a toxic degree.

These events — and the unusual gag order Justice officials placed on the redistricting dispute — reflect an administration in which political grasping trumps expertise of longtime, nonpartisan legal professionals. Just as in medicine, science or education, this degradation of the law ends up endangering the rights of everyone.